Street Light Interference

Though reports of parapsychological phenomena can mostly be relegated to the Looney Tunes museum, The Bitch has nonetheless has been fascinated and occasionally plagued by the minor X-Files manifestation known as Street Light Interference. Basically, SLIding happens when an internal power surge in a person (or a dog) creates an electromagnetic disturbance causing weird stuff to happen, kind of like in Poltergeist.

Certainly the energy at the relocation party for TOFF, a sliver of a boutique that held its relocation party on September 6 in its new power plant at 710 Lincoln Road, Miami Beach, was hyper-hyper, with an extra added kookiness boost from the incipient full moon. Apricot-haired fashion director Juan Carlos Cajigas rose to the occasion, deciding at the party's crowded apex to rearrange a phalanx of seven-foot-tall mannequins into a more animated fashion. "They need to be facing toward the door, and not in a line," Cajigas commanded a trepidatious assistant as red-wine imbibing guests squeezed through racks dresses and skirts in the $200+ range, many of the garments dangerously pastel colored.

Fortunately owner Carla Estrada was all smiles and relaxation, her Cleopatra curls bobbing and amber eyes radiating cheer as she smoothed traffic flow and help wrest control of some platters of cheese and wine from a cadre of Momserazzi who had settled down for some good eatin'. The Bitch arrived in such an adrenaline-cranked state of the flight half of fight-or-flight that she gained entry by simply vaulting the velvet rope, immediately surging toward the assortment of clear liquids.

At the exact moment the panting dog began threading her way toward easy-going DJ Aulden Brown, there was a pop and a crash, the sound of several of the boutique's recessed sodium arc lights exploding and hurtling down like fashion-seeking missiles. The nearly molten minimeteors mostly hit the ground; whereupon The Bitch used an unfortunate copy of Bomb magazine to scoop them up. (These artifacts are now on display with the hound's other trophies of weirdness.)

Brown kept his cool but looked at The Bitch accusingly.

I didn't do anything!

Guests began pointing at the ceiling. Leemor Rhodes, Miami's brunet version of Sienna Miller boho-chic and who totally rocks the whole arm-warmer thing, magically appeared, defusing the disturbance by declaring: "It is so time for fall. People just need to put on boots and black and brown and get over little things like this."

Tensions eased as Pucci-print wearing Daniela, a 23-year-old from Caracas, agreed: "Yes, the Wilhelmina models are back in town, so it's officially time for the season to begin. People will be cool."